NTSA to launch smart driving licences end of June

May 3, 2017 5:03 pm

The new driving licenses will be fitted with electronic chips that will contain key details of a driver, according to NTSA Director of Road Safety Njeri Waithaka/FILE

By JOSEPH MURAYA, NAIROBI, Kenya, May 3 – The National Transport and Safety Authority is set to launch a smart driving license by end of next month in a move aimed at instilling sanity on the roads.

The new driving licenses will be fitted with electronic chips that will contain key details of a driver, according to NTSA Director of Road Safety Njeri Waithaka.

“The smart driving license is going to allow a driver’s profile to be created for every license holder. This profile is critical in terms of profiling driver behaviour,” she said during an = interview with Capital FM News on Wednesday.

“That will allow us to instil change in the sense that whereas before a driver can have various convictions which are not connected anywhere and the insurances companies or even the police themselves are not able to piece together.”

All Kenyans will be required to have the new licenses that will be launched in phases to give time to people who have renewed theirs for several months.

“The smart driving license is going to be a one stop where this drivers profile is listed when the driver got the license, even their manner of driving, have they had convictions. So if a driver is convicted and arrested today for drink-driving and again next week for drink-driving, we shall have a profile that this driver is a risky road user.”

Njeri says they will also be able to crack down on rogue drivers, more so those of private vehicles, whom she says are to blame for the majority of road fatalities caused on Kenyan roads.

According to NTSA statistics, 31 percent of road accidents in 2016 were caused by private vehicles.

“Private vehicles are just as bad. They continue to present the highest risk when it comes to vehicles…PSV do present a larger problem in that they tend to take so many lives in one go,” she stated.

Public Service vehicles, she said are notorious in terms of breaking traffic rules, so we tend to focus on them. “But unfortunately, private vehicles are just as bad.”

Though speeding continues to be a major cause of road accidents, she said the major challenge has been behaviour and attitude of motorists.

She said more sensitization programmes will be launched to sensitize the public on the need to observe road rules.